Epiphany of the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  The azoth was almost too hot to hold. She took her thumb off the demon and was abruptly skyborn as the white stallion cleared a slab of twisted, smoking metal at a bound. The guns of the third floater were firing, the turret gun not at her but at the men and women pouring out of the buildings, the floater rising with a roar and a cloud of dust and sooty smoke that the wind snatched away, until the blade of her azoth impaled it and the floater crashed on its side, at once pathetic and comic.

  To Silk's bewilderment, his captors had treated him with consideration, bandaging his wound and letting him lie unbound in an outsized bed with four towering posts which only that morning had belonged to some blameless citizen.

  He had not lost consciousness so much as will. With mild surprise, he discovered that he no longer cared whether the Alambrera had surrendered, whether the Ayuntamiento remained in power, or whether the long sun would nourish Viron for ages to come or burn it to cinders. Those things had mattered. They no longer did. He was aware that he might die, but that did not matter either; he would surely die, whatever happened. If eventually, why not now? It would be over-over and done forever.

  He imagined himself mingling with the gods, their humblest servitor and worshipper, yet beholding them face-to-face; and found that there was only one whom he desired to see, a god who was not among them.

  "Well, well, well!" the surgeon exclaimed in a brisk, professional voice. "So you're Silk!"

  He rolled his head on the pillow. "I don't think so."

  "That's what they tell me. Somebody shoot you in the arm, too?"

  "No. Something else. It doesn't matter." He spat blood.

  "It does to me: that's an old dressing. It ought to be changed." The surgeon left, returning at once (it seemed) with a basin of water and a sponge. "I'm taking that ultrasonic diathermic wrapping on your ankle. We've got men who need it a lot more than you do."

  "Then take it, please," Silk told him.

  The surgeon looked surprised.

  "What I mean is that 'Silk' has become someone a great deal bigger than I am-that I'm not what is meant when people say, 'Silk.'"

  "You ought to be dead," the surgeon informed him somewhat later. "Your lung's collapsed. Probably better to enlarge the exit wound instead of going in this way. I'm going to roll you over. Did you hear that? I'm going to turn you over. Keep your nose and mouth to the side so you can breathe."

  He did not, but the surgeon moved his head for him.

  Abruptly he was sitting almost upright with a quilt around him, while the surgeon stabbed him with another needle. "It's not as bad as I thought, but you need blood. You'll feel a lot better with more blood in you."

  A dark flask dangled from the bedpost like a ripe fruit.

  Someone he could not see was sitting beside his bed. He turned his head and craned his neck to no avail. At last he extended a hand toward the visitor; and the visitor took it between his own, which were large and hard and warm. As soon as their hands touched, he knew.

  You said you weren't going to help, he told the visitor. You said I wasn't to expect help from you, yet here you are The visitor did not reply, but his hands were clean and gentle and full of healing.

  ***

  "Are you awake, Patera?"

  Silk wiped his eyes. "Yes."

  "I thought you were. Your eyes were closed, but you were crying."

  "Yes," Silk said again.

  "I brought a chair. I thought we might talk for a minute. You don't mind?" The man with the chair was robed in black.

  "No. You're an augur, like me."

  "We were at the schola together, Patera. I'm Shell-Patera Shell now. You sat behind me in canonics. Remember?"

  "Yes. Yes, I do. It's been a long time."

  Shell nodded. "Nearly two years." He was thin and pale, but his small shy smile made his face shine.

  "It was good of you to come and see me, Patera-very good." Silk paused for a moment to think. "You're on the other side, the Ayuntamiento's side. You must be. You're taking a risk by talking to me. I'm afraid."

  "I was." Shell coughed apologetically. "Perhaps-I don't know, Patera. I-I haven't been fighting, you know. Not at all."

  "Of course not."

  "I brought the Pardon of Pas to our dying. To your dying, too, Patera, when I could. When that was done, I helped nurse a little. There aren't enough doctors and nurses, not nearly enough, and there was a big battle on Cage Street. Do you know about it? I'll tell you if you like. Nearly a thousand dead."

  Silk shut his eyes.

  "Don't cry, Patera. Please don't. They've gone to the gods. All of them, from both sides, and it wasn't your fault, I'm sure. I didn't see the battle, but I heard a great deal about it. From the wounded, you know. If you'd rather talk about something else-"

  "No. Tell me, please."

  "I thought you'd want to know, that I could describe it to you and it would be something that I could do for you. I thought you might want me to shrive you, too. We can close the door. I talked to the captain, and he said that as long as I didn't give you a weapon it would be all right."

  Silk nodded. "I should have thought of it myself. I've been involved with so many secular concerns lately that I've been getting lax, I'm afraid." There was a bow window behind Shell; noticing that it displayed only black night and their own reflected images, Silk asked, "Is this still Hieraxday, Patera?"

  "Yes, but its after shadelow. It's about seven thirty, I think. There's a clock in the captain's room, and it was seven twenty-five when I went in. Seven twenty-five by that clock, I mean, and I wasn't there long. He's very busy."

  "Then I haven't neglected Thelxiepeia's morning prayers." Briefly, he wondered whether he could bring himself to say them when morning came, and whether he should. "I won't have to ask forgiveness for that when you shrive me. But first, tell me about the battle."

  "Your forces have been trying to capture the Alambrera, Patera. Do you know about that?"

  "I knew they had gone to attack it. Nothing more."

  "They were trying to break down the doors and so on. But they didn't, and everybody inside thought they had gone away, probably to try to take over the Juzgado."

  Silk nodded again.

  "But before that, the government-the Ayuntamiento, I mean-had sent a lot of troopers, with floaters and so on and a company of soldiers, to drive them away and help the Guards in the Alambrera."

  "Three companies of soldiers," Silk said, "and the Second Brigade of the Guard. That's what I was told, at any rate."

  Shell nearly bowed. "Your information will be much more accurate than mine, I'm sure, Patera. They had trouble getting through the city, even with soldiers and floaters, although not as much as they expected. Do you know about that?"

  Silk rolled his head from side to side.

  "They did. People were throwing things. One man told me he was hit by a slop jar thrown out of a fourth-floor window." Shell ventured an apologetic laugh. "Can you imagine? What will the people who live up there do tonight I wonder? But there wasn't much serious resistance, if you know what I mean. They expected barricades in the street, but there was nothing like that. They marched through the city and stopped in front of the Alambrera. The troopers were supposed to go in while the soldiers searched the buildings along Cage Street."

  Silk allowed his eyes to close again, visualizing the column described by the monitor in Maytera Rose's glass.

  "Then," Shell paused for emphasis, "General Mint herself charged them down Cage Street, riding like a devil on a big white horse. From the other way, you see. From the direction of the market."

  Surprised, Silk opened his eyes. "General Mint?"

  "That's what they call her. The rebels-your people, I mean." Shell cleared his throat. "The fighters loyal to the Caldé. To you."

  "You're not offending me, Patera."

  "They call her General Mint and she's got an azoth. Just imagine! She chopped up the Guard's floaters horribly with it. This trooper I talked to had been the driver of one
, and he'd seen everything. Do you know how the Guard's floaters are on the inside, Patera?"

  "I rode in one this morning." Silk shut his eyes again, striving to remember, "I rode inside until the rain stopped. Later I rode on it, sitting on the… Up on that round part that has the highest buzz gun. It was crowded inside, not at all comfortable, and we'd put the bodies in there-but it was better than being out in the rain, perhaps."

  Shell nodded eagerly, happy to agree. "There are two men and an officer. One of the men drives the floater. He was the one I talked to. The officer's in charge. He sits beside the driver, and there's a glass for the officer, though some don't work any more, he said. The officer has a buzz gun, too, the one that points ahead. There's another man, the gunner, up in the round thing you sat on. It's called the turret."

  "That's right. I remember now."

  "General Mint's azoth cut right into their floater and killed their officer, and stopped one of the rotors. That's what this driver said. It had seemed to me that if an azoth could do that, it could cut right through the doors of the Alambrera and kill everyone in there, but he said they won't. That's because the doors are steel and three fingers thick, but a floater's armor is aluminum because it couldn't lift that much. It couldn't float at all, if it were made out of iron or steel."

  "I see. I didn't know that."

  "There was cavalry following General Mint. About a troop is what he said. I asked how many that was, and it's a hundred or more. The others had needlers and swords and things. His floater had fallen on its side, but he crawled out through the hatch. The gunner had already gotten out, he said, and their officer was dead, but as soon as he got out himself, someone rode him down and broke his arm. That's why he's here, and without the gods' favor he would've been killed. When he got up again, there were rebels-I mean-"

  "I know what you mean, Patera. Go on, please."

  "They were all around him. He said he would have climbed back in their floater, but it was starting to burn, and he knew that if the fire didn't go out their ammunition would explode, the bullets for the buzz guns. He wasn't wearing armor like the troopers outside, just a helmet, so he pulled it off and threw it away, and the-your people thought he was one of them, most of them. He said that sometimes swords would cut the men's armor. It's polymeric, did you know that, Patera? Sometimes they silver it, private guards and so on do, like a glazier silvers the back of a mirror. But it's still polymeric under that, and the troopers' is painted green like a soldier."

  "It will stop needles, won't it?"

  Shell nodded vigorously. "Mostly it will. Practically always. But sometimes a needle will go through the opening for the man's eyes, or where he breathes. when it does that, he's usually killed, they say. And sometimes a sword will cut right through their armor, if it's a big heavy sword, and the man's strong. Or stabbing can split the breastplate. A lot of your people had axes and hatchets. For firewood, you know. And some had clubs with spikes through them. A big club can knock down a trooper in armor, and if there's a spike in it, the spike will go right through." Shell paused for breath.

  "But the soldiers aren't like that at all. Their skin's all metal, steel in the worst places. Even a slug from a slug gun will bounce off a soldier sometimes, and nobody can kill or even hurt a soldier with a club or a needler."

  Silk said, I know, I shot one once, then realized that he had not spoken aloud. I'm like poor Mamelta, he thought-I have to remember to speak, to breathe out while I move my lips and tongue.

  "One told me she saw two men trying to take a soldier's slug gun. They were both holding onto it, but he lifted them right off their feet and threw them around. This wasn't the driver but a woman I talked to, one of your people, Patera. She had her washing stick, and she got behind him and hit him with it, but he shook off the two men and hit her with the slug gun and broke her shoulder. A lot of your people had gotten slug guns from troopers by then, and they were shooting at the soldiers with them. Somebody shot the one fighting her. She would've been killed if it hadn't been for that she said. But the soldiers shot a lot of them, too, and chased them up Cheese Street and a lot of other streets. She tried to fight, but she didn't have a slug gun, and with her shoulder she couldn't have shot one if she'd had it. A slug hit her leg, and the doctors here had to cut it off."

  "I'll pray for her," Silk promised, "and for everyone else who's been killed or wounded. If you see her again, Patera, please tell her how sorry I am that this happened. Was Maytera-was General Mint hurt?"

  "They say not. They say she's planning another attack, but nobody really knows. Were you wounded very badly, Patera?"

  "I don't believe I'm going to die." For seconds that grew to a minute or more, Silk stared in wonder at the empty flask hanging from the bedpost. Was life such a simple thing that it could be drained from a man as red fluid, or poured into him? Would he eventually discover that he held a different life, one which longed for a wife and children, in a house that he had never seen? It had not been his own blood-not his own life-surely. "I believed I was, not long ago. Even when you came, Patera. I didn't care. Consider the wisdom and mercy of the god who made us so that when we're about to die we no longer fear death!"

  "If you don't think you're going to die-"

  "No, no. Shrive me. The Ayuntamiento certainly intends to kill me. They can't possibly know I'm here; if they did, I'd be dead already." Silk pushed aside his quilt.

  Hurriedly, Shell replaced it. "You don't have to kneel, Patera. You're still ill, terribly ill. You've been badly hurt. Turn your head toward the wall, please."

  Silk did so, and the familiar words seemed to rise to his lips of their own volition. "Cleanse me, Patera, for I have given offense to Pas and to other gods." It was comforting, this return to ritual phrases he had memorized in childhood; but Pas was dead, and the well of his boundless mercy gone dry forever.

  "Is that all, Patera?"

  "Since my last shriving, yes."

  "As penance for the evil you have done, Patera Silk, you are to perform a meritorious act before this time tomorrow." Shell paused and swallowed. "I'm assuming that your physical condition will permit it. You don't think it's too much? The recitation of a prayer will do."

  "Too much?" With difficulty, Silk forced himself to keep his eyes averted. "No, certainly not. Too little, I'm sure."

  "Then I bring to you, Patera Silk, the pardon of all the god-"

  Of all the gods. He had forgotten that aspect of the Pardon, fool that he was! Now the words brought a huge sense of relief. In addition to Echidna and her dead husband, in addition to the Nine and truly minor gods like Kypris, Shell was empowered to grant amnesty for the Outsider. For all the gods. Hence he, Silk, was forgiven his doubt.

  He turned his head so that he could see Shell. "Thank you, Patera. You don't know-you can't-how much this means to me."

  Shell's hesitant smile shone again. "I'm in a position to do you another favor, Patera. I have a letter for you from His Cognizance." Seeing Silk's expression, he added quickly, "It's only a circular letter, I'm afraid. All of us get a copy." He reached into his robe. "When I told Patera Jerboa you had been captured, he gave me yours, and it's about you."

  The folded sheet Shell handed him bore the seal of the Chapter in mulberry-colored wax; beside it, a clear, clerkly hand had written: "Silk, Sun Street."

  "It's a very important letter, really," Shell said.

  Silk broke the seal and unfolded the paper.

  30th Nemesis 332

  To the Clergy of the Chapter,

  Both Severally and Collectively Greetings in the name of Pas, in the name of Scylla, and in the names of all gods! Know that you are ever in my thoughts, as in my heart.

  The present disturbed state of Our Sacred City obliges us to be even more conscious of our sacred duty to minister to the dying, not only to those amongst them with whose recent actions we may sympathize, but to all those to whom, as we apprehend, Hierax may swiftly reveal his compassionate power. Thus it is that I implore y
ou this day to cultivate the perpetual and indefatigable-

  Patera Remora composed this, Silk thought; and as though Remora sat before him, he saw Remora's long, sallow, uplifted face, the tip of the quill just brushing his lips as he sought for a complexity of syntax that would satisfy his insatiate longing for caution and precision.

  The perpetual and indefatigable predisposition toward mercy and pardon whose conduit you so frequently must be.

  Many of you have appealed for guidance in these most disturbing days. Nay, many appeal so still, even hourly. Most of you will have learned before you read this epistle of the lamented demise of the presiding officer of the Ayuntamiento.

  The late Councillor Lemur was a man of extraordinary gifts, and his passing cannot but leave a void in every heart. How I long to devote the remainder of this necessarily curtailed missive to mourning his passing. Instead, for such are the exactions of this sad whorl, the whorl that passes, my duty to you requires that I forewarn you without delay against the baseless pretexts of certain vile insurgents who would have you to believe that they act in the late Councillor Lemur's name.

  Let us set aside, my beloved clergy, all fruitless debate regarding the propriety of an intercaldean caesura spanning some two decades. That the press of unhappy events then rendered an interval of that kind, if not desirable, then unquestionably attractive, we can all agree. That it represented, to judgements not daily schooled to the nice discriminations of the law, a severe strain upon the elasticity of our Charter, we can agree likewise, can we not? The argument is wholly historical now. O beloved, let us resign it to the historians.

  What is inarguable is that this caesura, to which I have had reason to refer above, has attained to its ordained culmination. It cannot, O my beloved clergy, as it should not, survive the grievous loss which it has so recently endured. What, then, we may not illegitimately inquire, is to succeed that just, beneficent and ascendant government so sadly terminated?

  Beloved clergy, let us not be unmindful of the wisdom of the past, wisdom which lies in no less a vehicle than our own Chrasmologic Writings. Has it not declared, "Vox poputi, vox dei"? which is to say, in the will of the masses we may discern words of Pas's. At the present critical moment in the lengthy epic of Our Sacred City, Pas's grave words are not to be mistaken. With many voices they cry out that the time has arrived for a precipitate return to that Charteral guardianship which once our city knew. Shall it be said of us that we stop our ears to Pas's words?